Overtired
by Deranged Black Kitten
Summary: Days after the sleeping plague, a sleep-deprived Rex shows up on Noah's doorstep. Suggested Noex. Oneshot.


_Being well-used to sleep deprivation myself, I just had to write this story (it wouldn't be the first time sleep deprivation snuck its way into my stories). I think the longest time I've stayed up before was 60 hours straight, and I've heard all sorts of stories from friends who have had to stay up even later than that, so surprisingly, what's written for this story really isn't exaggerated. I have actually reached a point before where I was so tired that I couldn't fall asleep. _

_This story has suggestive Noex, which is funny because I don't really care one way or the other for the pairing (I don't dislike it and I've read some stories with it that I liked, and yet I'm not a fan of the pairing... yet), but here I am writing a story with it. _

_This story takes place shortly after the episode "Plague."_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Generator Rex, don't sue me. _

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**Overtired**

It wasn't exactly how Noah planned on spending his evening, but he was going to be alone for the night anyway what with his mom working the night-shift and so he supposed he welcomed the unexpected company. Plus, when Rex came pounding on his front door (much in the way a police officer would and Noah made a note to talk to Rex later about trying not to sound like SWAT coming to break your door down), it was clear that the other boy needed some help and Noah wasn't one to turn away a friend in need.

It had only taken a little bit of prodding ("Come on, Rex, really? You came over at nine at night to play video games?") before the other boy crumbled. Quite literally in fact, as he just kind of collapsed against Noah, arms thrown haphazardly around the blond's frame, and miserably announced that he couldn't sleep.

And wasn't that the most obvious statement there ever was? Noah had seen all the signs of sleep deprivation before, on classmates and friends alike, sometimes even while looking in the mirror, and right now Rex could be the poster boy for all the sleep deprived insomniacs of the world. The dark circles around his eyes that could rival a panda, the fidgeting twitchiness, even the occasional outbursts of hysterical laughter at things that really weren't all that funny.

...or maybe Rex was on drugs. Hmm...

Noah would stick with the sleep deprived theory for now. They did just have that sleeping plague after all, and Noah had heard how Rex had to stay awake and work for the entire forty-something hours the plague had been going on. Maybe that just threw off the other boy's sleeping schedule and Rex was having trouble getting back on track.

"-and then Six had me run laps but I still couldn't fall asleep and it just made me feel even _more_ tired than I was," Rex babbled, pacing around the kitchen while Noah warmed up a glass of milk, "and then Holiday tried giving me some sleeping medicine but my nanites are like on overdrive or something and they kept breaking up the medicine before it could work, and I just don't understand how I can feel so tired but be so awake and unable to sleep. Six said something about a 'second wind,' but it feels more like a caffeine drip, and then Bobo thought it'd be funny to-"

"Rex," Noah said, cutting the other boy off. "When exactly was the last time you slept?"

Running a hand through his hair, Rex looked up at the ceiling in thought as he said, "I dunno. Uh.. How long ago did that sleeping plague thing happen? I had like a five minute nap when all of that was going on."

Noah blinked in surprise, "Dude, you've been awake for _five days_?"

"Five days? Has it really been five days?" Rex asked, getting kind of a hysterical edge to his voice, and then he slumped down into one of the chairs to the kitchen table, head falling against the table with a thud. His voice slightly muffled from his position, he bemoaned, "I've tried to sleep Noah, really, I have, but then I kept hearing creaking noises around the base, and when I tried to drown it out with white noise, that noise just kept getting louder and louder and _louder._"

Lifting his head up, he threw Noah a rather pitiful expression as he said, "And I'm just too wired and I can't stop thinking. I don't even know what it is I'm thinking about. Everything kinda stopped being coherent a day or so ago, I just know that I can't stop thinking." Rex paused to stressfully bury his hands into his hair. "I can barely even understand the words coming out of my mouth. I know that I'm talking, but I can't even... Noah, what am I even saying to you _right now?_"

Eyebrows raised, Noah's only response to that was to slide the now warm glass of milk across the table to his friend, simply saying, "Here."

Grabbing the glass, Rex took a quick swig of the drink and then made a face, "Ew, what? Why am I drinking this?"

"It's warm milk, it's supposed to help people get to sleep," Noah explained.

He always found it sort of interesting, the things that Rex didn't know because of his amnesia, things that were common knowledge for just about everyone else. It would seem that Rex had no interest in trying this particular well-known remedy for getting to sleep as the teen was quick to push the glass away from him with his fingertips, a look of distaste on his face.

Then suddenly in the next second, Rex was up and away from the kitchen table, his chair knocked to the side with one of his Smack Hands out and raised up in the air defensively. Just as quickly, Noah was standing in front of Rex, hands raised up in a pacifying manner even though it probably wasn't the smartest idea to be getting in Rex's way when the other teen was so sleep deprived. Still, he couldn't exactly let Rex go and destroy his kitchen, now could he?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, just calm down and put the Smack Hands away," Noah said, watching as Rex's eyes darted around the kitchen. The blond was beginning to wonder if he was in over his head on this.

"You've got spiders all over your kitchen, Noah!"

Hallucinations. Great. Of all the people that he knew to end up hallucinating, it had to be the one person that could easily destroy his house. There was no way his mom would ever let him see Rex again if that happened.

"There's no spiders, Rex," he said just a tad frantically as he tried to reason with the other boy, and then those darting brown eyes locked onto him. He grabbed onto Rex's hand, the one that wasn't a giant metal fist, hoping that that small touch alone could help center the other boy, bring him back down to reality. "You're just seeing things."

A confused blink.

"Seeing things?"

"Yeah," Noah said, nodding. "You're hallucinating."

Rex's hand turned back to normal and his arm flopped limply to his side. A sheepish look passed his face as he quietly apologized.

Letting out a relieved breath, just happy that Rex didn't put a hole in his kitchen wall, Noah said, "It's alright. Why don't we just..."

...Just what? Six and Holiday hadn't been able to get Rex to fall asleep, so what could he really do to help? It wasn't like he was an expert at getting to sleep. Whenever he was tired, he just flopped down in his bed and went straight to sleep. Rex though, Rex was seeing things, hearing too much, thinking too much. Right now, his friend's head was probably like a bee hive of half-formed thoughts. How could anyone fall asleep with that much activity going on around them?

Rex just needed to calm down, and though Noah didn't really have any particular plan in mind, he knew that the first step towards falling asleep was to actually be lying down, preferably somewhere comfortable.

"I'm not taking your bed," Rex protested not too much later on up in Noah's bedroom. While Noah searched through the mess of clothes in his closet, having already pulled out things like a sleeping bag and blankets, Rex restlessly paced around the room behind him. "I should be the one sleeping on the floor, not you. It's _your _bed."

"The bed's more comfortable," Noah said. "You're the one who needs sleep the most. I'll be just fine sleeping on the floor for one night."

"But-"

"So help me god, I will tie you to that bed if I have to, Rex!" he snapped. "Don't just think of it as me doing a favor for you, think of it as me doing a favor for _the world. _A sleep-deprived Evo can't be healthy for anyone."

A silence descended over the room, and it took Noah a few seconds to realize just how that statement may have sounded. The blond tossed a quick glance over his shoulder at the Evo teen to see that Rex had already directed his attention elsewhere and was fiddling with something on Noah's desk, seemingly unfazed by anything that Noah had said at all.

Well... okay then...

Finding what he was looking for, Noah called over to Rex to get his attention and then tossed his spare pair of pajamas over at the other boy.

"Here, change into those."

It was a loose-fitting t-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that he knew to be comfortable. He opened his mouth to remind Rex that the bathroom was just down the hall – it wouldn't surprise him if they other boy couldn't even remember that due to the state he was in – but then Rex started shucking off his clothes right there in the room and... _okay_, that worked fine too. Rex wasn't exactly the most modest person Noah knew and it wasn't like it was the first time the other boy stripped down in front of him. There'd been that time in Cabo Luna.

Turning so that his back was facing the other boy, Noah changed into his own pajamas and once that was out of the way, he went about setting up the sleeping bag. Thankfully, Rex didn't make anymore fuss about being the one to take the bed, and it wasn't long before the lights were out and they were both laying down in their respective sleeping spots.

But of course, if it had been that easy, Rex would have never come to his house in the first place.

"What was that?" Rex asked, jerking up into a sitting position.

"Just the house creaking," Noah explained, not bothering to sit up. "That's what buildings do. They creak."

Rex laid back down, but not a moment later, there was the slightest of noises coming from down the hall that, while in reality was barely noticeable, probably sounded ten-times louder to Rex. The Evo teen shifted restlessly in the bed, and even when there wasn't a noise, Noah could hear him shift again.

_Creak. _Shift.

_Creeeaak. _Shift.

It became a mildly annoying pattern, and just when it seemed like Rex might actually be settling down, the teen suddenly sat upright again.

"What now?" Noah asked, grumbling.

"Nothing," Rex said. "I was just starting to drift off and then the pillow brushed against my face and for some reason it made me think of banana pudding being poured on my face and, well, wouldn't _you_ wake up if someone was pouring banana pudding on your face?"

Banana pudding? Did he really want to know? ….No, no he didn't.

"Just lie back down, Rex," he said instead. "Close your eyes. Count backwards from a hundred."

'_Don't make me smother you with a pillow.'_

"But I've done that," Rex said, flopping down on his side, causing the bed to bounce slightly. "I've counted backwards from a hundred. I've counted backward from _a thousand. _I've tried everything, but nothing works." he let out a defeated moan, saying, "I'm gonna be awake for the rest of my life."

Noah wasn't really sure what made him decide to do it. Maybe it was Rex's miserable tone, maybe it was the fact that he was getting pretty tired himself. He wasn't even really quite sure where the idea came from, all he knew what that he was standing up and was climbing into the bed, under the covers, next to Rex.

"Uh... Noah?"

"Shut up, I'm trying something."

He was too tired to care how that sounded. Wrapping his arms around Rex, he pulled the other boy up against him, sighing when he felt Rex tense up.

"Relax, Rex," he said with quiet exasperation. "It's just another way of getting to sleep, that's all. You trust me, don't you?"

"Yeah," Rex said, briefly tapping a beat against the blond's chest with his fingertips. "Just saying... this kind of came out of left field is all."

"Well... I guess I do weird things too when I'm overtired," Noah murmured.

"Sooo... now what?" Rex asked, still kind of tense, his shoulders hunched up.

"Make sure you're comfortable."

Falling asleep was all about comfort, about relaxation.

There was a bit of awkward shifting before Rex was laying more naturally against Noah's side, one arm hesitantly draping over the blond's middle; only fully relaxing when Noah re-wrapped his arms around the Evo teen, as if that was some sort of approval that Rex needed that his 'comfortable position' was the right one.

"...Don't understand people," Rex mumbled against Noah's chest. "How am I not crushing you?"

"You're just not, okay? Stop thinking so much," Noah said. "If you have to think about something, then pick a word or a phrase that's relaxing to you and repeat it in your head."

"Noah," Rex breathed quietly.

"No more talking," the blond said, and the other boy hummed in response. "Now just close your eyes, focus on my breathing, and take deep, slow breaths."

Following his own instructions, Noah took deep, slow breaths himself, and Rex soon mimicked his breathing pattern until they were in sync with each other. His own mind growing fuzzy around the edges, Noah couldn't be sure how much time had passed, how long they laid there, but eventually Rex's breathing evened out to something more natural and the Evo teen's body went completely slack against the blond's.

'_Finally...'_

After that, it wasn't very long at all until he drifted off to sleep himself, the comfort of a warm body pressed up against him.

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_Endings are my weakness when it comes to writing. Dunno how I feel about the ending to this one. _

_This pairing is baffling to me, and kind of makes my head hurt. I think I know what my issue with it is though, it's the whole 'seme' 'uke' thing that you see so much in yaoi. In my opinion, neither Rex nor Noah really fit those roles. They're both strong male characters capable of taking care of themselves (so neither really fits the role of 'uke') and though the show hasn't touched on it too much, they also both have their vulnerabilities (along with whatever else it is that makes a character 'seme' I don't see either boy fitting that role either). _

_I know, I know, you can have a romance without having the whole seme/uke thing involved at all, but the whole Noex pairing is a bit over my head still. The slash fan in me wants to like it, but I guess I'm just not there yet because I haven't explored the potential behind this pairing enough yet. Each pairing that I like has its own individual formula that it follows and my mind just hasn't figured out yet what it wants the formula between these two boys to be. _

_Also, I'm not really a fan of the whole 'seme' role, and the characters who play that role. It's just not really of any interest to me, and Rex is my favorite character in the series, so having him be the seme (which seems to be the norm for the Noex pairing) just doesn't really work for me (and yet Rex isn't really an 'uke' either, at least not for the Noex pairing)._

_I could talk myself in circles about this for hours, at which point my brain would implode. _

_I do have a couple more Noex fic ideas in mind, and hopefully while writing them, I'll be able to figure out this damn formula between the two. u.u;_

_Anyway, review please and tell me what you think. :)_


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